was dying to know how she’d got on.
‘Isn’t Mr James a pet,’ she sighed. ‘His marriage broke up and he’s never really got over it. I mean, he went out with a few women, but nothing worked out. I think he’s lonely, don’t you sense it too?’
What Hannah sensed was that Gillian would have given poor hubbie Leonard and the talented Clementine the push if she could have comforted Mr James in a very unplatonic way.
By close of business, she’d met all the firm’s agents and had liked Donna Nelson best of all. A rather chic woman with a dark bob, navy suit and an efficient air, she was obviously very wary of Gillian and had greeted Hannah with a guarded smile that said, She’s been telling you all about me, hasn’t she?
Hannah responded with her warmest smile and said pleasantly: ‘Perhaps we could have a chat during the week and you can tell me how you’d like your calls handled.’
‘That would be great,’ Donna said, looking pleased. Probably sick and tired of Gillian’s sharp manner with clients, she was relieved to find someone who knew how to answer a phone without cutting the nose off someone.
Business didn’t appear to be brisk, but Gillian’s put-on phone voice, as frosty as her lipstick, wouldn’t have enticed cold callers to put their homes for sale through Dwyers.
One caller looking for Donna received a particularly sharp remark: ‘If she has time, she’ll get back to you.’
‘Personal call,’ Gillian said disapprovingly, hanging up.
Hannah said nothing again but vowed that when she had sole charge of the office, things would be vastly different. No receptionist she’d train would ever be so rude on the phone.
David James had chatted to her briefly before he left the office that afternoon, balancing his big frame awkwardly on the edge of her desk.
‘How are you getting on?’ he asked.
Beside her, Hannah could feel Gillian sitting up straight in her office chair, hoping to be noticed.
‘Fine. I think I’ll have the hang of it in a few days, although it’s easy enough to lose calls on this switchboard. The one in the Triumph was more modern and more efficient,’ she said frankly.
This time, she could sense Gillian bridling with shock that a new employee had dared say such a thing to the boss, but David James merely nodded.
‘We’ll talk about it,’ he said. ‘Goodbye.’
‘You’re the forward madam, I’ll say that for you,’ sniffed Gillian when he was gone.
‘You said exactly the same thing about the switchboard earlier,’ Hannah reminded her gently. ‘I was merely telling him.’
‘Mr James doesn’t want to be bothered with things like that,’ hissed Gillian.
Hannah said nothing.
She’d felt pleased as she drove home that evening, pleased that she had made the right choice in moving jobs and confident that she’d do well there. Bloody Harry and his ill-timed letter had ruined that sense of pleasure.
She went into her flat, threw her coat on the hanger and opened the letter.
Dear Hannah,
How’s it going, babe? Hope you’ve taken over the entire hotel business in Dublin by now. Knowing you, you have.
I’m still trekking around South America. Just spent a few weeks in BA (that’s Buenos Aires to you, babes).
‘Babes!’ she snarled, grinding her teeth fiercely. How bloody dare he call her ‘babes’?
I’ve been travelling with some guys and we’re planning another month here before we go to Chile…
She read lines and lines of chatter about odd-jobbing as a tourist guide and how he’d got a few shifts in an English-language newspaper the previous month. It was all surface stuff; nothing personal, no hint as to why he was writing to her for the first time in a year. It wasn’t as if she’d wanted a letter. Not now, anyway. In the first month after he’d left, she’d have killed someone for any news of Harry. Just a postcard or a phone call to say he missed her and wished he hadn’t left. If he’d phoned to beg her to visit him, she’d have downed tools and hopped on the first plane to Rio de Janeiro. It was immaterial that she’d thrown him out of the flat when he first announced that he was leaving her to travel abroad, immaterial that she’d roared at him for being a spineless coward who was terrified of commitment and that she never wanted to see or hear from him again. Ever. Because she missed him so much.
And for the first time in her life, Hannah had discovered that when you adored someone and missed them so badly you woke up in the middle of the night screaming out their name, you still wanted them back, no matter what they’d done or said.
Without even reading the final page, Hannah folded the letter carefully and stuck it in a drawer in the kitchen. She didn’t want to think about Harry. She didn’t want to remember what he even looked like…
Eleven years ago, he’d been attractive in a studenty way. Dark hair that reached his collar and curled madly when it got wet; bluey grey eyes that turned down at the corners and made him look constantly forlorn, and that wide, mobile mouth that could smile so mischievously. He always wore big jackets and baggy trousers that looked two sizes too big for him. But then, that was part of the charm of Harry Spender: his little boy qualities made women want to mother him.
Hannah had mothered him for ten long years, from the moment they’d met in McDonald’s and he’d spilt his milkshake all over the uniform she wore as a beauty counter assistant in Brown Thomas.
‘OhmiGod, I’m so sorry, please let me help you clean it off,’ he’d said, his face a picture of innocent remorse as they both stared at the remains of a strawberry shake dripping steadily off Hannah and on to the floor.
And she’d gone with him in the direction of the toilets, not even nervous about going off with a strange man, even when he came into the ladies’ with her and insisted on using loo paper to soak the shake off.
She should have refused him when he asked her out for a drink that evening. But then, Hannah was her mother’s daughter and, at the age of twenty-seven, she was still young enough to be impressed by someone who actually wrote for the Evening Press.
At home in Connemara, the Campbell family had only ever read two newspapers: the local paper the Western People and the Sunday Press. She’d grown up with it, had watched her mother put the previous week’s paper at the bottom of the chickens’ coop when they were hatched under the kitchen table; had laid it on the floor so that the men coming home from working on the farm wouldn’t muddy the floor with their filthy boots. To go out with someone who worked for the same group, well!
Of course, when she finally met Harry, court reporter extraordinaire, Hannah’s mother hadn’t been that impressed by him despite his job. But it was too late then. Hannah loved him and could already see herself walking down the aisle with him, radiant in white something or other, smiling for the official photo which would appear in that Sunday’s paper. Together for richer for poorer, for better for worse. Hannah loved that idea, the notion of stability, security.
